Oddworld: New 'N' TastyReview

As beloved as it is, certain aspects of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee have aged about as well as a wet mummy. Clunky controls, unadjustable harsh difficulty, and graphics that are hideous when scaled up to HD resolutions mean high barriers to entry for newcomers, which make it harder to discover one of the most memorably imaginative games of the late '90s. Thankfully, it's a lot easier in Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty. Rebuilding Oddysee from scratch, New 'n' Tasty modernizes the original's gameplay and art while leaving its level layout and design largely untouched. The end result is a smoother, more vivid, and much more immediately fun retelling of the excellent first Oddworld story.

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty

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Screenshots of Oddworld New 'N Tasty [from the Wii U version]

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Screenshots of Oddworld New 'N Tasty [from the Wii U version]

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty

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A brilliantly weird side-scrolling adventure, New 'n' Tasty focuses on Abe, a puny, bumbling alien out to escape the sinister factory farm where he and his fellow Mudokons are enslaved. Because Abe is relatively defenseless and weak, this involves dodging a lot of spinning blades and explosive traps (something that requires careful timing and observation), sneaking past threats, and – if there's no security hardware nearby to prevent it – mind-controlling guards. That last one is cathartically violent, letting you remotely walk your enemies into mines, or wipe out their friends (or your friends, if you're feeling mean) with gunfire before making your host explode in gruesome chunks.

Getting through the assorted hazards is tough enough on its own, but you also have a secondary task to consider: rescuing other Mudokons by leading them safely past danger and into magical portals. You're free to ignore them and simply blast through the central challenges, in which case you'll get a shorter experience and a downer ending. Alternatively you can work to save them all, which involves discovering and exploring a lot of trap-filled secret rooms, which is a lot more rewarding. (Pure speed runs are also encouraged).

In either case, leading them to freedom is a lot less frustrating than it used to be, now that you can command groups of them to follow you – and sneak, run, or hide – at once. That's just one of the changes New 'n' Tasty makes; levels are now seamlessly scrolling environments, giving them a more open, cohesive feel than Oddysee's single-screen puzzle rooms. You can now aim thrown objects with the right analog stick instead of simply tapping a button and hoping they find their targets, and Abe has a new, endless supply of bottlecaps you can toss around to briefly distract enemies and kill annoying bats. And while Abe still has a noticeable weight and momentum that make jumping or rolling between tightly spaced traps an imprecise bastard, the controls for doing so are a lot more responsive.

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The biggest change – and possibly the most controversial – is "Quiksave," which lets you instantly save your location and progress just by tapping the Dual Shock 4's touchpad, and reload by holding it down. This doesn't quite eliminate frustration – you'll probably still die pretty frequently – but it cuts down on it immensely, as you can now save just before trying something risky, or after each stage of a particularly tough challenge. I found it indispensable – hey, not everyone likes retracing all their steps from the last checkpoint when every mistake brings instant death – but it's easy to see hardcore fans crying foul, especially since there isn't a way to turn Quiksave off.

Couple that with rebalanced checkpoints, a gentler difficulty curve, and new camera angles (which reveal threats in advance and offer more visual clues about secret areas), and New 'n Tasty simply isn't as tough as the original, even on hard difficulty. However, the point here isn't so much to provide a brutal challenge as an enjoyable one – and New 'n' Tasty is definitely enjoyable. Its re-imaginings of RuptureFarms and the surrounding wilderness are hugely fun to puzzle through, delivering a continual stream of diverse new challenges, and certain sequences – like charging across cliffs on the back of Abe's hooting Elum, or rolling a giant spiked ball into a swarm of spidery Paramites – are much more exhilarating now that the scenery actually scrolls.

Exit Theatre Mode

It all looks amazing, too. Everything, from Abe's giant talking head on the title screen, to the suspiciously helpful signs posted throughout the backgrounds, has been lavishly redrawn and re-animated, giving Oddworld a new, more vibrant appearance. And it's accompanied by a wealth of newly recorded dialogue for Abe, his fellow Mudokons, and the creepy Slig guards, giving them even more personality than they had before. This is a top-flight production, and while it would have been nice to see a few more additions – like, say, an actual co-op mode instead of an alternating two-player option that’s misleadingly labeled as co-op – New 'n' Tasty is a fine return to form for a wonderfully strange classic.

The Verdict

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty is a beautiful remake that irons out nearly all of the problems and limitations of 1997’s Abe's Oddysee while bringing its best qualities to the fore. This ground-up remake looks and feels fresh enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any modern 2D platformer — evidence that Abe's Oddysee really was ahead of its time.